


Two Musicians In Search of a Song

by sinuous_curve



Category: Bandom, Panic At The Disco
Genre: Community: popoffacork, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-30
Updated: 2010-06-30
Packaged: 2017-10-10 08:03:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,118
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/97466
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sinuous_curve/pseuds/sinuous_curve
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Spencer pushes through the doors to the train station, he spends a long moment of thinking that it's empty. Spencer and Brendon in a train station, at the beginning of something.</p><p>Betaed by nova33</p>
            </blockquote>





	Two Musicians In Search of a Song

When Spencer pushes through the doors to the train station, he spends a long moment of thinking that it's empty.

 

The sound the doors make when they clang against the wall echoes and rebounds in the cavernous room. The ceilings, when Spencer cranes his neck, look like they're easily twenty or more feet above his head. Bright sunlight pours in through skylights and large windows along the far wall, casting the room in warm, honeyed colors. Stately benches made of dark, well polished wood march in two lines down the center of the room.

 

Spencer checks his watch. He's early. Very early.

 

Sighing, he hoists his suitcase into a better grip and steps in, letting the door fall closed behind him. The bang echoes again and Spencer winces. He half expects someone to impatiently shush him for disrupting the quiet.

 

He hasn't been to church since he left home for college; even growing up, religion was never something he was taught to fear. Still, the station reminds him of church on Sunday afternoons. Church and a little bit of the library, the big one his mom used to take him to whenever the selections on the local branch's shelves weren't enough to satisfy her.

 

The heels of his nice shoes click quietly on the marble floor and, just like everything else, they echo.

 

A few steps in, Spencer pauses for a better look; behind a glass window he sees a heavyset man in a rumpled uniform snoozing contentedly with his chin dropped down to his chest and his hands folded over his belly. A round, navy blue cap sits on the counter in front of him. He's not the liveliest company Spencer's ever encountered, but it's still nice to see another human face.

 

Compulsively, Spencer checks his watch again and, unsurprisingly, only two minutes have passed.

 

He can't help it. Being late has always made a muscle in his jaw twitch. Especially when missing something, like a train, runs the very definite risk of putting a large dent in his plans for the future. And not even just the immediate future, but his future as an overarching whole.

 

Shaking his head, Spencer walks along the wall nearest the door. It's lined with chairs upholstered in fading blue fabric. It looks like they were once soft, but time and wear have left them threadbare and faded in places. Spencer guesses they're still probably more comfortable than the hardwood benches, and he picks one midway down the wall to sit on.

 

He sets his suitcase by his feet and reaches into an outer pocket for the battered paperback he's been trying to read for the better part of two weeks. He's been grabbing paragraphs in odd moments of waiting, but hasn't really gotten a chance to sit down and sink into the story. It's a pulp serial killer thriller, so it's not honestly as though it needs his undivided attention, but he still enjoys letting a story really absorb him.

 

The characters are a little blurry and their roles in the plot even more so, but he bends back the cover anyway and starts in.

 

Normally he likes quiet for reading. He fought tooth and nail his junior year to get one of the coveted single rooms on campus, knowing that his grades couldn't take another semester of trying to study around the sounds of chugging and beer pong. He only ended up in one because a kind soul in the office of student housing took pity on him and conveniently lost the application of a senior who wanted the same space.

 

But there is such a thing as too quiet.

 

Spencer taps his foot on the floor, drums his fingers on his thigh, and the words blend and bleed into blocks of ink that don't mean much of anything.

 

Sighing, he closes the cover and tucks the book back into the pocket it came from. Another watch check shows ten more minutes have inched past.

 

On the other end of his impending train ride, a two-day trek across the country, waits an interview at one of the most prestigious accounting firms in the US. The idea of accounting firms having prestige and glamour at all is perversely funny to Spencer, but the size and importance of the firm isn't.

 

Midway through his senior year (a scant two classes from fulfilling his major requirements) his advisor calmly advised him to start putting in applications for internships and positions, just to see what happened. Getting a bite from Ernst &amp; Hoarwell was a surprise for everyone involved, mostly Spencer himself.

 

After a bit of judicious Googling, Spencer's parents were overjoyed to realize their baby boy, fresh out of school and still wet behind the ears, potentially had a place at a firm that made more money in a year than some small countries.

 

Spencer smiled at them over the phone. He couldn't think of anything to add to what they were already saying. Yes, it was amazing. Yes, it was lucky. Yes, he should be insanely grateful.

 

And he is.

 

To a degree.

 

Frowning, Spencer shakes his head, like the motion will be enough to jar the circle of thoughts from his mind. He's been mulling it over for three weeks, ever since he got the call, and it hasn't worked yet. Once again it doesn't, and Spencer's left staring at the benches and the light and little flecks of dust floating through the still air. He wishes he hadn't forgotten to charge his laptop. He wishes anyone he could call wouldn't just throw their goodwill and excitement at him.

 

He wishes he felt a little less like an ungrateful wretch and a little more reasonably excited for the first threads of a potential life beginning to unfurl.

 

The bang of the doors being pushed open again is enough to jar Spencer from his brooding and have him jumping so high he's fairly certain he levitates from the seat. Only slightly abashed, he cranes his neck to get a look at whoever's making their way through the heavy doors; Spencer's maybe a little inordinately grateful to have someone else to share the weighted silence of the station.

 

The new arrival turns out to be a boy. (Well, he's definitely old enough to not really be a boy anymore, but he looks about Spencer's age and Spencer has a strange amount of trouble thinking of himself as a man. His father is a man, but Spencer still has Batman boxers and wears them whenever they're clean.) The boy's wearing a suit and a white button down and a thin, black tie, which Spencer almost laughs at until he remembers, wait, he's wearing almost the same thing, trading the jacket for a coat.

 

He's rolling a battered trunk on wheels that squeak softly and rhythmically and he's got a ticket sticking out of his pocket. He does the same glance around the room Spencer did, catching sight of the sleeping man at the ticket counter and noting the empty benches. When his eyes land on Spencer, he offers up a crooked half smile and Spencer doesn't have to think before returning it. He broke up with Luke a month before graduation after almost eighteen months of dating. It's still a strange thought, but he's allowed to look -and smile- again.

 

The boy squeaks his way over to Spencer and sits down in the chair to his right. His trunk drops off its wheels with a dull, resounding thump. Spencer would swear he actually sees a little cloud of dust spring up from the cracking leather and he has to smother a smile behind his hand.

 

"Hello," the boy says. He neatly sets his ticket on the trunk and smoothes down his tie and hair, then turns to Spencer with a brighter, less shy version of his initial smile. "I'm Brendon. Brendon Urie. I'm pleased to meet you." He holds out his hand.

 

Spencer reevaluates how old he thinks the boy, Brendon, is. In all his time at college, Spencer can't recall anyone in his peer group introducing themselves with such formality unless there was an adult watching or extenuating circumstances. Spencer has to admit, he's slightly charmed by the gesture. "I'm Spencer Smith," he says, taking Brendon's offered hand and giving him the best firm handshake his father taught him. "It's nice to meet you, too."

 

Brendon smiles again and nods, but seems content to sit back in his chair.

 

It's slightly disappointing, but Spencer's spent enough time waiting in airports and train stations that he doesn't really expect conversation. Even so, the presence of another human being is enough to make him feel less inclined to worry and obsess and brood, as he's wont to do when he has nothing to distract himself with, and he reaches down for his book again.

 

From the corner of his eye, he sees Brendon bend down to his trunk, unsnap the lid, and rifle around in the contents for a few moments. When he comes back up, he's got a book in his hand.

 

It takes Spencer a second of covert staring to realize that's it's not just a book. It's a Bible, with a cracked spine and the gilt wearing off the stamped letters on the front page.

 

Which. Well. Spencer can't help it. It strikes him as a little odd.

 

It's not his usual forte to start conversation, which is probably a part of that whole wanting-to-live-alone thing, but he's curious and they still have almost two hours to wait. "Are you a priest?" he asks.

 

Brendon looks up with a quizzically amused look on his face. "What? Me? No. Definitely not."

 

Spencer blushes, brushing the back of his nails against the thin, cheap paper of his novel's pages. "Oh, sorry. I just wondered with the-" He waves his other hand in the vague direction of the Bible and Brendon smiles, pink coloring his cheeks.

 

"I'm coming back from my mission," he says. Spencer raises an eyebrow. "I'm Mormon?"

 

Intentionally or not, the words cant up at the end into a question. Religion was one of the classes he passed over while trying to fill in the lib arts requirements for his major. Spencer fancies himself relatively well informed, but his images of Mormonism run to polygamous sects in the desert and child brides.

 

"Congratulations?" he hazards and, to his secret delight, Brendon laughs softly and runs a hand through his hair.

 

"Thank you," Brendon says, ducking his head. "I. Thanks."

 

It's probably pushing the tenuous bounds of their small kinship, but Spencer is honestly intrigued. There's something about this kid, hesitancy due to religion aside, that Spencer just really likes. It's maybe in the way his eyes crinkle at the corners with each smile.

 

Yes, it's corny like the worst romantic comedy.

 

"How did it go?" Spencer asks.

 

For a long moment, Brendon pauses with his hand splayed over the tissue thin paper of his Bible, like he's trying to drink the words in through the skin of his palm. During their handshake, Spencer had a split second to note the calluses on the pads of Brendon's fingers and Spencer wonders, staring at his knuckles and nails, whether Brendon is both a Mormon and a musician.

 

"It went," Brendon eventually says with another laugh, different from the others. It's rueful and introverted. Spencer thinks too, though he might be imagining it, there's a tinge of what could well be fear. "I mean, it wasn't like I was in a different country saving children or anything like that. It was just door to door stuff, trying to spread the Word and all that."

 

Spencer remembers Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses coming to his door in high school. He and his sisters used to pretend they only spoke French and giggled behind their hands when they closed the door. Six years out from that, Spencer feels a belated stab of guilt. He's never actually thought about the missionaries as being sincere in their desire and not just. Annoying.

 

"Did you convert anyone?"

 

Brendon smiles, dragging his fingers through his hair; Spencer's beginning to suspect it's a tick. "We're taught that if only one person is brought into the fold, we can count our missions a success," he says, in the musical, sing-song tones of someone who has repeated the same words a hundred thousand times until they don't mean anything anymore. Brendon shrugs. "People don't really want to be converted. And, if they are interested, they're much more likely to find us and not the other way around."

 

"Yeah." Spencer nods. "Are you going home now?"

 

That, at least, draws a more genuine smile to Brendon's face. Though, it's still tinged with a hint of something other than happiness. "Yes, home again, home again," he says, closing the Bible and setting it on top of his trunk next to his ticket. "My two years are up and it's time to head that way."

 

Spencer wants to ask where home is, what Brendon's going to do when he gets there, why he makes it sound like he's just finished up a prison sentence, but he doesn't.

 

Instead, he spends a moment looking at Brendon's face caught in thoughtful profile. The light pouring in from the windows tinges his skin in gold and softens the curves of his cheeks and chin. His eyes are bright, beautiful brown and, goddamn. Spencer has spent a lot of time reeling and drifting at the reality at not being half of a Spencer and X couple.

 

Not so anymore.

 

And, of course, he has to be sweet and religious. It's a combination that rarely works out well when Spencer falls in want.

 

"What about you?" Brendon says suddenly, lifting his eyes and looking at Spencer with genuine interest writ in them. "Why are you getting on a train?"

 

Of course.

 

Now it's Spencer's turn to offer up a smile he can tell doesn't quite reach into his eye. He tucks his book back into the pocket and cracks his knuckles. Brendon's eyes stay trained on Spencer and he can't not answer. "I'm going to a job interview," Spencer says hesitantly. "With a premiere accounting firm."

 

Brendon eyes crinkle at the corners in a spray of crows feet as he grins. "That's wonderful."

 

"Yeah," Spencer agrees. It's the same tone as when he gave his parents the news.

 

Brendon keeps looking at him, face open, but not demanding. It's a strangely comforting look, one Spencer associates with his grandfather. Before he died, Spencer used to sit on his lap and pouring out all the troubles a four year old carries in his heart. It's a face willing to listen, but making no demands. Which, in turn, makes him want to say more.

 

"You'd make a good psychiatrist," Spencer says ruefully and Brendon quirks his eyebrows and nods in agreement. "I graduated in May with my degree in Accounting and General Business. I got my CPA a couple weeks ago and, if all goes according to plan, I'll get this job and be on my way."

 

Something in Spencer's stomach turns familiarly sour. He's been getting the feeling ever since he walked across the stage, shook the hand of the university's president and provost, and picked up his degree. Standing there, in front of a couple thousand of his peers and their families, the lights felt too bright and too hot. Sweat pooled in the small of his back and the easy smile Spencer had worn with pride and excitement for most of his last semester twisted into something small and scared.

 

It'd been like flipping back four years in time to when he first walked into orientation with no idea what he wanted to do with his life and only forty-eight months standing between him and real life.

 

Spencer shakes his head and looks at Brendon, fixing his grin more firmly in place.

 

Nerves are a bitch and they always have been. Ten minutes before he has to do anything important he always feels like he needs to turn around and run. He sweats. His stomach rebels and ties itself into knot upon knot. But then he's doing what he needs to do and it all fades away.

 

"That sounds like an amazing opportunity," Brendon says, folding his arms across his chest and leaning back in the chair. He rubs his thumb against his elbow, catching on a little fold of fabric in the crease.

 

Behind the glass of the ticket booth, the sleeping agent lets out a grunting snore and they both jump. He shifts his bulk, drops one hand down from his belly and settles back down into deeper sleep. Spencer feels irrational giggles bubble up in the back of his throat and he has to bite down on the inside of his cheek to keep them from spilling out. He looks over to Brendon and sees his lips pressed into the thin line of suppressed smile.

 

It's only funny because they forgot he was there, which honestly makes it not that funny at all. But, looking at each other, it somehow ricochets into punch-drunk hilarity and they both have to hunch over, swallowing down laughter.

 

Brendon's shoulders are hitching. Red spreads across his cheeks. Spencer wants to kiss them and, goddamn fucking hell. It's just his eternally crappy luck.

 

Eventually, they both settle down to sporadic hiccups. Brendon's hand traces the same path through his hair and kicks his feet up, resting his heels on his trunk. "You know, this feels like it could be the first scene in a horror movie."

 

Spencer raises and eyebrow. "How do you figure?"

 

"Two people alone in an almost abandoned train station." Brendon sweeps his hand out in a broad gesture, indicating the empty benches and the windows. The light's lost a little bit of its glow and settled into a deeper orange. Twilight's just barely begun to fall. Spencer can imagine what the station is like when the last train leaves just before midnight and he has to suppress a little shudder. "A train station that probably has quite a lot of history. First to go would be him over there in the ticket box, because there hasn't been sufficient exposition to justify keeping him around. And then it would be us, two versus the bad guy. Only one will win. Dun dun dun!"

 

Spencer laughs as Brendon dramatically wiggles his fingers. "Don't we need a virginal blond girl?"

 

"Nah," Brendon flips his hand. "You're kind of blond. I'm sure you'll do."

 

"Hey." Spencer fakes outrage, pressing a hand to his heart. "One, I am not blond. I haven't been anything resembling blond since I was six. And I am not a virgin, and thus am rendered ineligible for the part. So sorry."

 

"Well," Brendon taps his thumb against his jaw, considering. "The traditional rules of horror movies say that one, you never have sex, and two, the survivors will be one guy and one girl who are drawn together through the horror and trauma of what they've experienced. Which would mean that, if you tweak it a little, both of us would survive."

 

Spencer raises an eyebrow. "Yes, but you can't have a horror movie where only one person dies. That's just boring."

 

"That," Brendon says, furrowing his brow slightly. "Is very true. Hm." He pauses, mouth pulled into a slight frown as he considers the option. Spencer has to swallow down smiles and laughter and the urge to reach over and smooth his thumb along the vertical lines between Brendon's brow. "What we need is more killer fodder."

 

"The train doesn't leave for awhile yet." Spencer holds up his watch to confirm. "More people could show up. That could actually be an interesting and unique convention for this particular horror movie, you know? Having people dropped into the middle of already existing murder and chaos."

 

Brendon perks up at that, sitting straighter in his chair. "I can imagine it now. We're hiding somewhere in the benches." He points to one across the room and Spencer doesn't think about being huddled in the small space. "The killer, whoever he or she may be, is slowly stalking their way through the room, knowing that we're in here, but unable to find us."

 

"This is the only room we can get to without a key, except the bathroom. He wouldn't have to look very hard," Spencer quips.

 

"Work with me," Brendon says, shooting Spencer a withering glance. "I'm building atmosphere. Anyway, the killer's slowly stalking through the room, carrying a knife dripping with the blood of the man at the ticket counter. The music swells. And then! The door swings open and a group of teenagers with loose morals come pouring in. And we're saved!"

 

Spencer bursts into laughter. "And why are these morally lax teenagers at the train station?"

 

"They're on their way to a-" Brendon waves his hand. "I don't know. Tropical vacation."

 

"A tropical vacation? On a train." Spencer cocks his head. "Last I checked, this train was going north and is sadly bound to land."

 

"Oh." Brendon gropes for words and can't grasp them. He shakes his head and rolls his eyes, pokes his tongue out at Spencer and flops down in his chair. "Way the ruin the movie, Spencer, without killer fodder we have to die."

 

"I guess we're doomed to be a romantic comedy," Spencer says lightly and Brendon huffs out a chuckle.

 

"We'd," Brendon says slowly, "be a very odd couple."

 

Something between them shifts slightly and Spencer could smack himself across the cheek.

 

He forgets, sometimes, that other people are acutely more aware of sexuality than he is.

 

He's gotten past the vast majority of the issues he had when he was fourteen and first consciously acknowledging that maybe he had an affinity for dicks other than his own. He likes who he is, he's comfortable with who he is, and if he hasn't been a date in the better part of six months, that's because he still feels weird thinking of himself as single after Luke.

 

"I'm guessing you're a horror movie aficionado?" Spencer says and things palpably click back.

 

The set of Brendon's shoulders loosens slightly and he leans back. "On the sly," he says, blushing slightly. "I used to watch them at friends' houses, where my parents wouldn't see. I liked drama, I guess. They're so over the top and overblown and overacted. It's fun. It's the same reason I like musicals."

 

Spencer smiles and tips his head back. "I don't think I have ever heard the two compared like that."

 

Brendon's blush deepens slightly and rubs his knuckles against his chin. "It's true, though. Musicals and horror movies are so far removed from real life. I never jump out into the street and burst into song and I've never been chased around an abandoned lunatic asylum by the ghost of a patient. They're an escape."

 

When he was small, Spencer used to spend hours chasing after Ryan through all kinds of stories and imaginary lands. He understands that.

 

"When I was a kid," Brendon continues, "I used to want to write musicals. I had this great plan of writing a horror musical and doing a whole number about blood spray."

 

Images of chorus dancers spurting arterial blood and doing high kicks at the same time flit through Spencer's brain. "You should do it," he says, reaching over and nudging Brendon's elbow. "Why not?"

 

"Oh, well." Brendon's mouth tightens into a small frown. "That's not really the plan."

 

It's funny, in the kind of way that makes the short hairs on Spencer's arms spring up, that Brendon sounds exactly like Spencer does when he has to talk about plans. Life plans. Fucking life plans.

 

Spencer shifts in his chair, tilting his body in toward Brendon. He rests his elbow on the arm and props up his chin. "What is the plan?"

 

"First, to not get murdered in the train station." Brendon smiles tightly and Spencer chuckles. "Go home. Get married. Have babies. Repeat step three."

 

"Oh." Spencer doesn't know what to say to that.

 

His parents fed him the Sesame Street diet of you-can-do-whatever-you-want-to-do, tempered by what he logically knows is nothing more than genuine parental concern. They wanted him to pick something practical to major in, something steady, something that would bring in a paycheck and keep up with the bills and knock down the inevitable rising tide of student loans.

 

Lacking any other clear idea of what to do with his life, Spencer fell into Accounting and never fell out.

 

It's not the same thing, not really, but there's an intersection there with Brendon and Spencer can empathize, if nothing else. Following a script that maybe wasn't exactly written with you in mind isn't easy.

 

"I guess that's what everyone wants, eventually," Spencer says carefully, chewing on his bottom lip. "I mean, the American dream and all that is marriage, kids, white picket fence and a dog. It's worked. Pretty well."

 

"Yeah." Brendon looks up at the ceiling, out the skylights. Spencer has a sneaking feeling he's not looking at the smear of wispy clouds. "My father always says that we never really know what we want until we look around and realize that we have it."

 

Spencer looks up and out the skylights. The flat stretch of blue has deepened from the bright, excited shades of midday to something more muted. It's a little tired and a little sad, but maybe Spencer's just imagining things.

 

"My ex says that if you don't go out and search for what you want, you'll never accidentally run into it."

 

Talking about Luke at all pulls up a confused tide in Spencer. Somewhere between fondness and loneliness and hurt. He's not special, in the gamut of break ups, but Spencer had never fallen in love before Luke, and certainly never fallen out of love.

 

Brendon quirks his mouth in a half smile. "She's very wise."

 

Spencer winces.

 

He's never quite worked out how to casually drop the whole gay thing into conversation. Maybe it would be easier to let people make their assumptions and quietly pity them for existing in such a narrow minded, heterocentric world. But. Well, Spencer spent a lot of time feeling like his stomach was crawling with worms every time the word gay filled up his mouth and got caught behind his teeth. It's not in him to go back to that.

 

"He's very wise," Spencer says. "Luke."

 

The reactions of others to what Spencer chooses to do with his dick will always be something that fascinates him in a perverse way. For some, it's like just talking about gay sex has the power to bend an unwilling body over the arm of a couch and slick their ass with lube.

 

Brendon's reaction is different than Spencer would have expected. A year and a half living with Luke's penchant for blatant PDA whenever he knew their debauchery would draw the most scandalized looks, pearl clutching, and loud tsks has left Spencer wary. In his more cynical moments, he sometimes thinks it's a miracle they never got the shit beaten out of them.

 

He's come to rely more and more on "sticks and stones may break my bones, but I will not allow words and stares and all that bullshit to hurt me."

 

Brendon doesn't draw his face into a perfect mask of horror. He doesn't start crossing himself. He doesn't sadly shake his head and start subtly murmuring about what a shameful waste it all is. He just. Widens his eyes a little and chews on the corner of his mouth, nodding slowly.

 

"That's. Oh. That's okay," he says. Brendon trips and stumbles over the words.

 

"Thank you very much for your approval," Spencer returns wryly and, to his surprise, Brendon blushes and claps a hand over his mouth.

 

"I didn't mean it like that." He gropes for the words, the pink on his cheeks rapidly deepening to a bright shade of hectic red that spreads down his neck and up to the tops of his ears. "I just. I mean. It doesn't bother me."

 

Which. It's unexpected.

 

Spencer leans back in his hair, crossing one leg over the other. "So you're not going to try to save my soul or convert me or anything like that?"

 

Brendon rolls his eyes. "No, I'm definitely not," he says quietly and with surprising earnestness.

 

They lapse into silence. Spencer has a moment of wanting to say, "So how 'bout them Red Sox," because just like there's no graceful way to drop the gay into conversation, there's really no graceful way to recover back into normal conversation afterward. It's more dependent on the other person than on Spencer himself and Brendon seems to have sunk into his head, tapping his thumb against his lips.

 

Spencer shifts his body away from Brendon and back straight in the chair.

 

He checks his watch and is only slightly dismayed to find that there's still a rather significant chunk of time before his ticket says he'll be allowed to board the train.

 

Suddenly back to feeling antsy, he reaches into his pocket and pulls out his phone. He's not surprised to see a handful of waiting messages. A couple texts from friends, including one from his former roommate telling him to, "knock thr fkcin socks off," and something borderline nonsensical from Ryan about the ether foretelling his success.

 

He has a voicemail, too, and Spencer knows it's from his mom before he dials.

 

"Hello, darling boy," she says, very nearly bubbling over with material happiness. "I bet you're probably on the train already, but I just wanted to call and wish you luck and yell you have very, very proud I am of you. Make sure you press off your shirt when you get there and, Spencer, honey, for the love of all that's professional in the world, please don't wear your lucky tie."

 

Spencer's lucky tie is a stylized neon depiction of the strip. He loves it.

 

"Anyway. Call me when you get there. I know you're grown up, but I worry. I love you, honey. Bye."

 

He presses seven to delete and thinks about calling her back, but rejects that notion. Spencer loves his mother, he does, but he can't stand to accept even more of platitudes and confidence boosters.

 

She's so excited, is the thing. She's so proud. Preemptively proud of what he's going to do when he gets the Ernst &amp; Hoarwell job and becomes a steady, responsible, respectable member of society. Because she never worries about him.

 

The problem with The Plan (Spencer always capitalizes the words in his head, like they're part of a living, breathing proper noun) is that he can't remember when he chose it.

 

That sounds dumb in his own head, like he's ascribing everything that's happened to him in the past four years to fate or karma or the maniacal machinations of an overbearing parent. It didn't happen that way, not at all. But, at the same time, it's not entirely untrue. There has to be a middle ground between choice and having choices made for you, a gray area between actions and passiveness. That's where he falls.

 

For a long time it was him saying he didn't know, he didn't know, he'd work it out someday. And then someday came and someone said, "You like numbers, try accounting," and since Spencer didn't have another option, he went along with it.

 

From that sprang a couple classes. From those classes sprang a major and a five year post-graduation plan and the bare skeletal framework of a life that would revolve around managing the money of others, buying a house, investing wisely, and living in relative monetary comfort. Forever and ever, amen.

 

"Are you okay?" Brendon asks quietly. Spencer looks over to find his body now angled toward Spencer, arms wrapped around his chest like he's cold.

 

"Me?" Spencer says, swallowing and putting on a grin. "Yeah, I'm fine. It was just my mom telling me not to wear my lucky tie to the interview."

 

Brendon chuckles, eyes crinkling at the corners again. "What's wrong with your lucky tie?"

 

"There's absolutely nothing wrong with my lucky tie," Spencer protests. He feels a little looser for the dumb jokes. "It's a fantastic tie that I bought in a casino. It's neon and I wore it to my high school graduation and every successful first date I've ever been on."

 

"That's a powerful tie," Brendon says sagely. Spencer smiles crookedly.

 

He bites down on his bottom lip. Brendon's still looking at him with that open, therapist look. He's listening if Spencer wants to 'fess up what he's really thinking.

 

Spencer looks around the train station and wishes there were answers written on the schedule tacked up on the wall or in the posters advertising local events six months out of date. With the light and color bleeding away, it feels a little bit like he's managed to slip into a forgotten place. It's a more alluring thought than he was prepared for.

 

"Do you ever feel like you didn't really pick your life?" Spencer asks. The words rush out almost independent of conscious thought and he blushes immediately, wishing he could bite them back.

 

"I." Brendon's face clouds over. He looks down at his hands. "Spencer, I've been told I was going on my mission from the time I was old enough to understand what a mission is. And I just spent two years doing that. So. Yeah."

 

"Is it different," Spencer asks slowly, looking at the downturned curve of Brendon's cheek, "when it's for God?"

 

Brendon pulls his mouth into a crooked smile that doesn't make its way into his eyes. "Maybe if God had been the one to send me on my mission. But it wasn't Him. It was my parents and our church. I'm not one of those people who felt a...divine spark."

 

A shadow falls over Brendon's face, drawing his mouth into a tight, unhappy frown. He looks guilty, is the thing. Spencer doesn't honestly know what anyone can say to that.

 

The illogical thought Spencer has is that God and parents aren't exactly the same thing, but there's a similar thread of authority between them. That, and a deep and abiding desire to please.

 

"Would you change it?" Spencer leans in towards Brendon. He smells clean, like soap and laundry detergent.

 

Brendon doesn't answer right away. He looks down at his hands first, then his knees, then the Bible. Slowly, he reaches down and picks it up, brushing his fingers over the faded gilt of the title with a mixture of familiar affection and exhaustion.

 

"I guess it's not as easy as that," Brendon says carefully picking his words. "Changing my mind wouldn't be just not going on my mission. It would be changing the way everyone in my family and the church looks at me. It would be. I don't know. Rejecting a part of what they very firmly believe in."

 

"They?" Spencer echoes carefully.

 

"They." Brendon huffs out breath and presses the heel of his hand to his forehead. "I believe in God, but I was raised that it takes more than just belief to have faith. Faith is weird. I guess. I don't know, Spencer. I'm twenty-three. I just spent two years trying to convert people who mostly looked at me like they either wanted to ask how many wives I have or pet me on the head and say they're sorry I'm stuck like this.'

 

"When I was little, faith was easy. Because kids take everything on faith, you know? They don't have a reason not to, I guess. You believe in Santa and the Tooth Fairy and that your parents are always right, the golden rule always works, and all it takes to be content is your favorite toy and the smell of your mom's cooking. Back then, believing was effortless, because it never occurred to me to not believe. That there were those who didn't.'

 

"Then you grow up. Then I grew up. And it got a lot harder to accept everything I was taught as truth without proof. Which, of course, is the fricking point of faith, you know? Belief without proof. Otherwise it's not faith. Otherwise you know and it's not the same."

 

Spencer, unthinkingly, reaches out and lays his hand on top of Brendon's. "Do you need proof?"

 

Brendon looks up, mouth curled into a frown. "I think. I. I think I'm more afraid that any proof I found would prove some of the things I was taught right. And there are a lot of things about the way I grew up that I love and I wouldn't change for any amount of money. But there are a lot of things that I think break hearts every day."

 

The light flooding through the station has changed from an orange that made Spencer think of campfires to a bruised kind of purple, the color of a black eye a week out.

 

In the back of his mind, he thinks that this scene could sound really, really weird when described later. Two almost strangers sitting together to talk about life, the universe, and everything and having trouble working their way around to forty-two. But it's not, not really. Luke used to say that the greatest tragedy of people was how often they brushed up against each other and how rarely they really changed each other.

 

He was kind of pretentious. He was kind of a douche. But sometimes he was in the near vicinity of right.

 

"Can I ask you something?" Brendon says and Spencer dips his head in a nod. "If you could go back and change it, would you?"

 

"I." Spencer curls the fingers of his free hand in and uses his thumb to crack his knuckles. "I wouldn't know what I'd change it to."

 

"That's not the point," Brendon presses. He hasn't moved his hand and Spencer's trying his best not to think about that. "If you could change it, the point being the fact of the change at all, would you do it?"

 

A host of glib answers spring up to Spencer's tongue, but he pushes them down. Because if Brendon can talk about faith, then Spencer can at least talk about himself.

 

The bitch of everything is that there is a certain allure to the idea of stability. He would be okay with the security of a monthly paycheck that covered bills and rent and student loans. He doesn't hate the conformity of that, or whatever some of his more hipster college friends spouted off when the railed against consumer culture and repression of conformity.

 

(They were all wearing the same sunglasses as they talked, with the same haircuts, so.)

 

But, the truth is, Spencer sometimes wonders if there's a bigger difference between a life well lived and a life passionately-lived. Which, well, he's not anything like a deeply creative artist who feels crushed by normalcy. It's not anything nearly that dramatic.

 

It's something a little more human than that. He wants, mostly, to be excited to get out of bed in the morning, because he knows that every day has the potential to make him feel. Spencer can't make himself believe that numbers will ever do that.

 

"Yeah," he says, shaking his head. "I'd change it. You?"

 

Brendon, to Spencer's surprise, doesn't look away. "I think I would."

 

Silence falls again, because Spencer doesn't know how to move on from that. Confessing the truth is always an awkward business; confessing the truth to a near stranger especially.

 

Lights suddenly flicker on in the station, casting pools of yellow on the marble floor and filling the air with a sub-audible buzz. Brendon's skin suddenly turns a mellow gold from a light directly overhead and the shadows deepen. He looks a little bit like the subject of an old painting, replete with a story of misery and strength.

 

Or something like that. Spencer doesn't pretend to be poetic.

 

"What would you do?" Spencer asks.

 

He wishes he had a bottle of cheap wine and a pack of cigarettes. It would lend a better atmosphere to the conversation. Hell, he wishes they were both sitting on someone's fire escape, listening to the soft sounds of a party going on inside. Maybe if they were, they'd be at a place where they could change.

 

Brendon tips his head back onto the wall. "I would play guitar." He smiles gently, eyelashes fluttering against his cheeks. "I would get on the train to my mission and never show up at the house. I would go do something that I wanted to do and see what happened from there."

 

Spencer remembers the calluses. "Are you any good?" he teases gently and Brendon rewards him with a slow smile.

 

"Pretty good," he says. "I like music, I always have. I went through this Ritalin period when I was a kid, because I was really, really hyper, and it became a zombie period. Everything just seemed a little distant. Like I was looking at it through a dirty glass? I used to plug my headphones in and listen to the songs as loud as they would go, until my ears actually hurt. But it was worth it, because I felt alive."

 

Spencer got a drum kit for Christmas when he was seven and banged away on it for five solid weeks until he had to go back to school. Ryan got a guitar that Christmas and Spencer chooses to believe that was coincidence. To save the sanity of everyone in the house, Spencer's mom agreed to pay for lessons, so long as he restricted practicing to an hour a day. Secretly, Spencer's pretty sure his parents thought he'd end up leaving the kit to dust in the garage, but he didn't.

 

Middle school brought band. He thumped away while his classmates sawed on violins and cellos and honked on clarinets. It was just barely in the realm of music rather than noise, but there were still discernible songs hiding here and there and Spencer lived for that. Moments happened, sometimes, when three fourths of the players hit the right note at the same time and they sounded very nearly good.

 

He marched in high school, always perversely proud of his uniform and feathered hat. Junior and senior year, he and Ryan fucked around their garages with the thin vestiges of a band. It was just the two of them and Blink-182 covers, but they could carry a tune.

 

Spencer used to hope, in the back of his mind, that something would happen there.

 

It didn't, of course, and now Ryan's living in LA and doing God-only-knows what. He communicates in free verse poetry pretending to be emails.

 

He called when Spencer broke up with Luke and at graduation. There's always going to be a kind of love there, born of being practically one person for a lot of years, but. Ryan graduated, Ryan's dad died, Ryan went off the deep end in a weird way and Spencer kept it together.

 

The joke used to be that Ryan was going to spend the rest of his life looking for himself, while Spencer's known who he was from the womb. It's not as funny as it used to be.

 

"I had a band in high school," Spencer says. "It was just me and my best friend and we weren't anything too special. But sometimes we actually played our own stuff, which was a step up from a lot of the other kids who had bands. I could never really tell if we were good or not, but it made me happy."

 

Brendon turns his hand underneath Spencer's and suddenly their fingers are laced and he's squeezing lightly. "I guess that makes us kindred spirits."

 

Spencer idly wonders how much time they have until the train pulls in from its previous stop, pausing just long enough for them to board. On and on it'll go, until they both get to their stops and, if The Plan holds, go their separate ways and never see each other again.

 

Spencer's never known these kind of nights, when things inexplicably click, to last to the next day.

 

His watch says that they suddenly only have another twenty minutes before the train should arrive. Ridiculously, Spencer suddenly feels the press of time bleeding away more intensely than he ever did during the worst of any finals week, when he had six papers to write, four tests to study for, and two projects looming on the horizon.

 

"Do you," Spencer says with a...grandness he doesn't entirely feel, "believe in fate?"

 

Brendon chuckles softly and runs a hand through his hair. "Fate? I don't know. Fate's like faith, I guess. You have to accept it as inevitable and hope for the best. The idea of having that little control is weird."

 

"True." Spencer pulls his bottom lip into his mouth and exhales in. "But it also means that whatever weird things happen in life, you have the comfort in knowing that it's all part of something that was supposed to happen. Like. A safety net. There's a reason behind all the crappy stuff, which makes it easier. And there's a reason behind the good stuff, which makes it better. A reason for, you know. Meeting a stranger in a train station."

 

Spencer steals a look at Brendon from the corner of his eye.

 

"Ah, of course." Brendon grins.

 

Minutes tick past and Spencer doesn't know what to say. There aren't good words to frame what he's thinking, something deeply and ridiculously reckless pushing away in his chest. All through high school, all through college, he never did anything that wasn't scheduled and appropriate. He never broke the rules, never rebelled against what was set in stone.

 

He feels like, somewhere, Ryan's laughing his ass off and he doesn't know why.

 

"Want to hear something I've never told anyone else?" Brendon asks suddenly.

 

Spencer nods. He wants a lot of things, some more acutely in this moment than others, but he'll take a secret.

 

"During my mission, I was working with this guy on his mission named Dallon." Brendon tips his head back and the wall sends some of his hair pricking up in a spike. Spencer wants to smooth it down. "He was a good guy. A friend. And we were doing laundry one night. It was late and we were alone. I liked him, he was funny. He liked me. I kissed him."

 

There's a moment between Spencer hearing the words and actually realizing what Brendon's said.

 

It's a little bit like a scene from a Hallmark movie, when the music swells into something deep and profound and the camera zooms in for a close up, cutting between both their faces. It's a moment of deep revelation and it should be milked for all the potential drama and emotional impact inherent to such a profound experience.

 

"That has to suck for you," Spencer blurts out.

 

He has a long standing habit of dealing with Important Moments with blunt reactions. When he told his parents, the best he could come up with was, "Pass the peas, I like guys, and I'm not fu- dating Ryan."

 

It's the same kind of thing, he supposes.

 

Brendon's looking at him with eyes that have too many emotions writ in them for Spencer to read each one.

 

Then Brendon starts laughing, gut deep and borderline hysterical. "You know, I've imagined about a million different reactions to me telling someone about that. And somehow you managed to capture it better than anything I came up with."

 

Spencer recognizes the emotion. In the grand scheme of things, his story was easy. His parents stared for a moment, blinked, and promptly replied that they'd known for some time, they just wanted to let him tell them when he was ready. But he knows the fear of turning over every possible reaction in your head, hoping for the best and expecting the worst.

 

Spencer's no expert in the intricacies of Mormonism, but he's not an idiot and religion has a well documented tendency of not being so nice to those who deviate. He can't figure how a penchant for the same sex could easily reconcile with the whole marriage/babies/white picket fence Plan that Brendon skimmed over. Not when the sticking point is who will be standing beside Brendon in the framed family portrait that goes on the mantle.

 

"Are you-" Spencer begins, but the question dies because he doesn't know how to finish it. "What are. I mean. Shit."

 

Brendon rolls his shoulders in a shrug and rubs the back of his neck. "Yeah, pretty much."

 

It would be so much easier if Spencer was the kind of person who reveled in connections, who could offer an easy solution in the palm of cupped hands and know with absolute certainty that everything would turn out all right. It would be easier if he didn't want to pull Brendon in close to his chest and kiss him hard enough to erase the fear and doubt hiding close to the surface.

 

It would be easier...if it was that easy.

 

"What are you going to do?" Spencer asks.

 

"I don't know," Brendon says and he sounds raw. "I haven't figured that one out yet."

 

"You deserve happiness," Spencer blurts out. Like he has any idea of what would make Brendon, whose last name Spencer can't honestly remember, happy.

 

"So do you," Brendon replies, reaching over and laying his other hand on top of their still loosely laced fingers.

 

For a beat, they look at each other in silence. The light's bleeding away even faster now, from purple tinged with gray to the deceptively dark blue of true night. Illogically, Spencer imagines he can hear the sound of the second hand on a clock ticking down to zero.

 

"You should skip your interview," Brendon says suddenly, cocking his head to the side. "You should do it. Go find the friend you were in a band with and make music."

 

Spencer's jaw actually drops open for a long second. "I can't do that."

 

"Why not?"

 

"Because!" Spencer shakes his head hard and throws his hands into the air. Something that isn't quite panic blossoms in his chest. It's too hopeful. "Because I just graduated with a degree in accounting that I have to pay for and I can't afford to go back to school and get another degree and I don't want to live in my parent's basement and it would be really fucking irresponsible at this juncture and it would be wasting a huge opportunity."

 

"Spencer," Brendon says, tightening his hand. The words are calm, but threaded with urgency. "Will getting this job make you happy?"

 

Funnily enough, happiness has never factored into Spencer's Plan.

 

It was always one of those things that everyone assured him would come along. Get everything you need and then you'll figure out a way to be happy with what you've got. Or something like that.

 

"I-"

 

"Be honest."

 

Spencer closes his eyes, inhales long and exhales slow. "No. Probably not."

 

"Jesus Christ!" Brendon yells, throwing up both his hands. "Spencer, then don't do it. Get on a train going a different direction! Go start another band! Do something, because trust me, you don't want to get to the point where you're looking back and thinking that the biggest thing you can say about your life is that you did what you were supposed to do."

 

Spencer's heart is pounding against his ribs, thudding almost painfully in the cavity of his chest.

 

It's partially that same reckless urge, leftover from always doing what he was told, constantly picking the responsible path people conveniently laid in front of his feet. It's partially looking at Brendon, though, at the bright sparks in his eyes and the color on his cheeks and his mouth. It's recognizing the passion in another human being.

 

Before he can really think about it, Spencer reaches out, curls his hand around Brendon's tie, and pulls him into a kiss.

 

As kisses go, well. It's kind of awful in the way that Spencer will always remember it as one of the most brilliant, technicolor, defining moments of his life.

 

Their teeth click together and their noses smash up against each other hard enough for it to actually, legitimately sting a little. It takes a long moment to get their heads tilted different ways and there's entirely too much tongue on both their parts at first. But.

 

But then Spencer cocks his head to the right and Brendon does the same and they slide in right, clicking together. Spencer pushes his tongue into Brendon's mouth and Brendon meets him halfway. Brendon's hands somehow end up on Spencer's shoulders, fingers pressing lightly against the fabric of his coat.

 

Spencer cups Brendon's face in his hands and thinks that, if nothing else, he's done one wonderfully reckless thing in his life.

 

When they break apart, Brendon's mouth stays open slightly and he looks a little like someone spiked his punch and took a two by four to the back of his head. "Oh," he says. "My. Oh, my."

 

"I'll skip my interview if you'll come with me," Spencer says in a rush. "Brendon. I can't skip it on my own, I'll start thinking about what a terrible idea it is. But if you come with me, I won't and, fuck. I don't know. Maybe we can both be happy."

 

Brendon stares. "Spencer. I. Spencer."

 

Spencer looks at his watch. They have five minutes.

 

Behind the ticket booth glass, the sleeping man wakes up and stretches his arms in a jaw-cracking yawn. He picks up the little circular hat on the counter in front of him and pops it back on his head at a jaunty angle. He glances at his own watch and starts shuffling papers. Spencer's heart is trying to break out of his chest, because he hasn't wanted something this badly in a long time. Or ever.

 

"You can't tell me to go find happiness and then expect me to not tell you the same thing," Spencer says. He's still got his hands around Brendon's cheeks and he wants to kiss him again. He thinks Brendon would let him. "I don't expect anything, I just. We should try. Come on."

 

Brendon inhales and exhales fast, hands cutting in tighter to Spencer's skin.

 

"I," he says. "I."

 

Spencer can't breathe.

 

Brendon says, "Okay."


End file.
